


To Capture a Moment

by skye_42



Series: Photo Fics [1]
Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, Fluff, I may make this a series, Mortal world, jurdan fluff, just Jude and Cardan photobombing eachother, literally I just wanted a photo booth fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24157936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skye_42/pseuds/skye_42
Summary: Jude introduces Cardan to mortal technology. Specifically, photographs.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Series: Photo Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1834420
Comments: 9
Kudos: 211
Collections: favorite on TFOTA





	To Capture a Moment

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I’ve ever posted, I hope you all like it!

It began on one of Jude’s routine trips to the mortal world, as she was walking through the hall from the living room to the half bath in Vivi’s apartment. Behind her, the tv blared and Oak loudly sang along to the opening theme song. Vivi and Heather were out for dinner, like they usually were when Jude came for her weekly cartoon dates with her little brother, because apparently there’s only so much Teen Titans that Vivi can take. 

She’d never paid much attention to the walls in the hallway, never studied all the photos in their wooden frames, all painted by Heather with different designs. She’d never looked at the pictures of Heather and Vivi, at the new school photo of Oak or the collection of Polaroids from his last field trip to the zoo. 

She’d never put any thought to how she didn’t have a single photo of herself. 

Over the next few weeks, no matter how hard she tried to shake the thought from her head, it wouldn’t leave. She had no pictures from her life before Faerie, no snapshots of her human family or what she looked like growing up, she had nothing to remind herself what she used to look like. 

She tried to tell herself it’s foolish to mourn over something like that, that she threw Mr. Hiss into a fire long ago and she would’ve likely done the same to any photos, but she just can’t seem to stop trying to picture her mother’s facial features and her father’s smile. She knows it would be so much easier if she just had a single photographic reminder. 

So that’s how she finds herself in a shopping mall, pulling her confused husband towards a photo booth by the escalator. 

“My love, wherever are you taking me in such a rapid manner?” He sounds bemused, but he doesn’t try to pull away from her. 

She’d brought him with her to the mortal world multiple times. Oak once requested his presence for a Teen Titans date, another time Jude had needed tampons and Cardan had been absolutely fascinated by the concept of a convenience store, and on more than one occasion he’d demanded they return to the land of Ulta. Still, in all his time visiting the mortal world, he’d never been inside a mall. 

Jude doesn’t answer as they reach the booth, electing instead to pull back the ratty black curtain and shove him unceremoniously inside. 

He’s almost comically too large for the tiny photo booth, his fae body far too long and graceful to fit comfortably on the bench. Still, he sees the look in her eyes and decides not to fight her, pulling in his feet as best he can and doing his best not to laugh as she tries to fit in with him. 

“Just humor me, ok?” She’s short as she pulls a wrinkled five dollar bill out of her wallet, inserting it into the money slot and cursing when the bill spits back out. An impressive string of language and one flattened bill later, she’s tapping away at a glowing screen. 

“Jude, darling, are you alright?” The laughter is gone from his voice, replaced by concern as he watches his wife furiously tap, her frantic anger not quite covering the tears welling up in her eyes. “Tell me what’s wrong, my wife.”

Her finger freezes and she bites at her bottom lip to keep it from quivering, not daring to look towards Cardan for fear of losing her self control. 

She takes a deep breath, focusing on calming her racing heart, and says, “I want a picture with my husband, because I do not have one with any of my family.”

He brings a hand up to her face, thumb brushing against her cheekbone as he delicately turns her towards him. Her eyes remain lowered, focusing intently on the logo of the black band shirt he favors most on their visits to the mortal world. 

“Jude, my sweet villain,” his teasing lacks all the bite from when they were still schoolchildren, “you should’ve just told me. I would’ve already arranged for us to sit for a portrait.”

“No,” she shakes her head, “I want a picture, a photograph.”

His brows furrow in confusion and she finally looks up to him, her eyes pleading. 

“Then we shall sit for a photograph.” He concedes, not having the faintest idea what a photograph is. He looks around them, lip curling at their dark, cramped surroundings. “Though I’m confused as to why that would lead us to this little black alcove.”

She turns back towards the glowing screen and presses it a few more times before leaning back. He absentmindedly wraps an arm around her, his fingers playing with the hem of her peach blouse. 

“Look right here and smile.” She points straight ahead, at a little glass plate with some strange object embedded behind it. “Don’t blink when it flashes.”

A little voice calls out from a small black circle that Jude has once explained was called a speaker. It counts down from five and Cardan obediently smiles, keeping his eyes open even when a bright white flash threatens to blind him. 

Then his jaw drops open as the screen displays a portrait of them, the most lifelike he’s ever seen. 

You can read the logo of his shirt, see the lace detailing of Jude’s blouse and the individual strands of her hair. Every color is accurate to life, down to the gold ring around his irises and the faint blush on his wife’s beautiful cheeks as she offers the most dazzling smile he’s ever seen. 

He’s so busy being in awe of the photograph that he doesn’t hear the little voice counting down again, doesn’t pose or smile or prepare himself at all. He’s shocked when a second flash illuminates the booth, capturing another photo of them. 

This one pops up on the screen, showing his dumb astonishment in perfect detail. He finds himself flushing in embarrassment at how stupid he looks, at how openly awed he is by what Jude must see as simple technology, but he stops when he sees Jude in the photo. 

She’s not looking forward like in the last one. In this picture, she’s looking at him. 

If her smile in the first photo was dazzling, then this one was sensational: the most gorgeous she’d ever looked, in his humble opinion. The easy tilt to her lips, the adoration in her eyes that he’s never really seen himself, the way she watches him with love written in every line of her face. Is this truly how she looks at him when he isn’t watching?

His Jude, his queen and his spy and his warrior, has never looked so lovely as she has in that photo, that photo where she looks relaxed. 

He turns to her as the speaker counts down a third time, finding her still watching him with that look. His heart absolutely melts, every beat screaming out her name as a grin pulls at his cheeks. 

When she sees his smile, she actually giggles—Jude Duarte giggles! A little tear of joy rolls down her cheek and the booth flashes white and another picture has been taken. 

He doesn’t get to look at this one, because he’s too busy pulling his wife in for a kiss. His fingers card through her hair and her hands grab fistfuls of his shirtfront as the speaker counts down a fourth time. 

By the time the flash goes off, Jude is all but on his lap. 

When the booth is dark again, she pulls back, her eyes glittering in the faint glow of the touchscreen. He opens his mouth to speak, but is cut off by the sound of something falling. 

Jude turns and grabs a long strip of shining paper, folding it down the middle and tearing it in half before handing him one side. 

He grabs it, holding it in his hands as softly as possible as he looks down at the four photos of them, little versions of the ones that had been displayed on the screen. Each is more realistic than any portrait he’d ever laid eyes on, each shows a Jude that seems genuinely happy. 

“Thank you,” she whispers with tears once again in her eyes as she looks down at her strip, “for humoring me.”

“Jude—“ 

“I know it seems silly to an immortal, once you’re grown, you all don’t change with time,” she continues like she didn’t hear him at all. “But for humans, change is constant. To have a snapshot of a memory, a moment frozen in time, gives us something to look back on years later. It gives us a way to remind ourselves what we were like then.”

She looks back up at him, clutching the photos to her heart with a quivering smile, a smile brighter even than the horrid flash of the booth. Jude—his Jude—grinning from ear to ear over something as simple as a piece of paper. If they had been anywhere else, he’d have been willing to offer the world to capture that smile. 

But he doesn’t have to, he’s already got it in his hands. 

He looks once more at the pictures, at the one of them staring lovingly at one another and the one of them kissing with passion that his younger self would’ve thought impossible. 

“Tell me how we can get more of these.” He breathes, not trusting himself to speak to loudly. 

“We can buy a Polaroid, they print photos right from the camera,” she offers. “We could take that into Faerie.”

He leans forward, pressing a kiss to her forehead before insisting that she lead him to where they may purchase such a device. 

He’s going to fill an entire hall with just photographs of her.


End file.
